Saturday, February 5, 2011

I wrote this a long time ago maybe a couple of years ago. I wrote it for a small mag in the UK, looking over it again now I can't help but laugh at my sensationalism. There is something so naive and cocky about it. Of course there is, my writing is to a degree still so but it is only because of my youth. I am cursed with my youth to be sure of the world.See? I'm doing it again. Or maybe it's because I've been reading English writers lately; When you read an Englishman you can't help but laugh at sensationalism. Anywho here it goes:

Tim Roda at the Greg Kucera Gallery:

Most galleries are clean and sparse, sterile even. The Greg Kucera Gallery goes above and beyond, when you enter it feels absolutely lifeless. Footsteps heard in this gallery are the type of hollow steps that should only be heard in the dead of the night A barren world fit to be inhabited only by Tim Roda's photographs of family and play.

Trained at the University of Washington and currently residing in New York, Roda returns home with a show full of uncertain glances. Incorporating himself, his wife and children in most of the black and white photographs on display, he creates captivating and oddly complex portraits. The depictions insinuate classical themes which involve cut up cardboard, wooden spears and teeth gnashing all suggesting child's play. But once you look closer you find a sudden and arresting loneliness in these portraits. The ambiguity of the family's emotions appears to rest heavy on their games. Despite the confused look in Roda's eldest son's eyes or the lack of smile on his wife's lips the silliness about all these photos is only intensified by the subjects ostensibly serious minds.Then walking amongst the living visitors to the Kucera Gallery's self imposed Dead Sea aesthetic ou come to a second realization. That Tim Roda is giving you an adult view on childishness but truly a view on the primal nature of man. From his son standing stoically, spear raised in a gesture of power against the sea or the family roasting a humongous fake pig, belly splayed open; to the brutality of kings and knights swept far away from reason in passionate actions. His displays of mankind's descent into anger seem dangerous yet forgiving, Tim Roda shows us tangled in loneliness, in joy and in the primitive; all the way to our pasts of solitude in our animal selves and back.

Just got a new follower, Mandee you are incredible. Now follow me to your undoing, no freedom, pain, passion, torment or broken pieces of humanity shall escape our grasp. The youth pounding through our veins like rough surf cutting against the rocks, no smooth river in the rain, but girls standing in fish nets and boys clad in dog collars and denim coats, taking the tour, wide eyed round the flesh of mud, of man in vulnerable sight, down side walks, in upstairs corner apartments with tortured yellow walls comes contact with an other soul and knowledge tongued deep into us by men walking in high-heels, women in soft pink and maiden flowers sit helplessly in lewd, forgetful ridiculousness. But our grasp is far reaching to an other time of smoke and freedom sug, smoke and freedom. Mandee follow me down to hell.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

We all have memories of dreams, the troubles we once held, consumed day to passing night. A couple of years ago I had a dream of elegant nature, not a creature of a life like so many of my dreams, it was a repast of a life.

I had the dream that I would become an artist’s model and not by beauty but by heart I should garner my fame as a desire. An utmost need to every artist who knew or only have yet to know they require a warm body to create true life in still nothing of color. From painter to photographer to sculptor would I be tossed around the globe, sought, created, glorified and scrutinized by artists who seek out only what is. In this life I require no riches but only a friendly hand, an open smile and one warm meal a day. I expected no glamour, no fame but only opportunity, chance to know of the greatest minds, to see creation, to see the world moving and dying behind eyes of innocence. I would by great heart create my charm, by quick mind earn my reputation. I have no desire to be an artist in this life no, no I wished to move through the heated breath of creators who toil in the filth of the ditches with a scrubbed face and teach philosophy fractured with belief. To lay my hand on each sweat rich brow and speak, to think is to be.

Through knowledge of living, through knowledge of lies, through lessons of heart would I give the bearing of soul to each piece. To each item of beauty would I give a piece of myself, sunny and silk to cotton and loneliness but never would it give a drop of beauty to me. Because I would not squander my right and duty, to bear soul upon not only beauty but to represent common workers with hair dark as oil, to missing children whom wandered off from home, to the homeless who forge on still, forgotten walkers of cold streets, mothers, daughters, those with broken hands, the resented, the plagued, those fallen in the dirt, with bleeding lips, limps, those who know no treasure but memory, eyes in the dark and rosy cheeks never seen. Touch them with hands of care, offer the open palm and shed light through tears.

At the same time I am acutely aware of my other obligation, to birth in you inspiration, to provide the fool’s gold, hope. My caress, my song, my warmth, to allow you to bathe in a glory that is not mine, no I merely pour the warm waters down your back and wipe your face clean. I am to love you as you come and I shall, to each person who stands before me I shall be pitiful. It is my duty because I am not human, I am art, I am thought, to think is to be and I am nothing else but raw existence.

Need less to say this dream never came to be and I suppose I shall close the book on it.